Jon Meacham on Stunning NYT Trump Report: ‘This Is What the Founders Were Worried About’

Presidential historian Jon Meacham spoke with Brian Williams on MSNBC last night about the stunning New York Times report on the FBI opening an inquiry into whether President Donald Trump was working on behalf of Russia.

And he expressed just how unbelievable this whole thing is:

“You look at all of these different fronts and you have the sort of emergency conversation which is deeply important and complicated, but we’ve really never had––and if we have, it’s classified and lost to history at least so far––a President of the United States who is considered to be possibly an asset of a foreign government. This is what the Founders were worried about in the 1790s. The Jeffersonians worried that Washington and Hamilton might be British agents, Washington and Adams and Hamilton worried that Jefferson might be a French agent. But that was in a kind of fevered political atmosphere. There was no FBI to investigate it.”

Meacham noted that “if anything could possibly elevate the stakes of our current moment,” the Times report has done that.

Trump today went on a tear on Twitter in response to the report, blasting James Comey and insisting he’s been “FAR tougher on Russia than Obama.”

“The worst possible scenario here is we’re like the Titanic steaming through the North Atlantic and we know the iceberg is there, we’re not sure how big it is, and the Carpathia won’t answer our distress calls,” Meacham added.

You can watch above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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Just as AG Barr indicated during the nomination process, there won't be investigative details that were declined for prosecution released by the DOJ in regards to Mueller's investigation. Congress and the public will only see the charges they pursued for indictment. It is against the DOJ rules to discuss the details of investigations that cannot be prosecuted. Comey did it with Clinton, but it is never supposed to happen. He did it only to exonerate her inappropriately and against the advice of the chief DOJ Counsel James Baker. Rosenstein said today that AG Barr will do the right thing and elaborated on his understanding of the matter:“The guidance I always gave my prosecutors and the agents I worked with during my tenure on the front lines of law enforcement were if we aren’t prepared to prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt in court,” Rosenstein said, “then we have no business making allegations against American citizens.”